Direct Tax Collections Reach ₹23.40 Lakh Crore in FY 2025-26; ITR Filers Rise to 8.67 Crore
Net direct tax collections reached Rs 23,40,373 crore (about Rs 23.40 lakh crore) in FY 2025-26, and the number of income-tax return filers rose to 8,66,82,347 (about 8.67 crore). The figures were given by Minister of State for Finance Shri Pankaj Chaudhary in a written reply to Lok Sabha Unstarred Question No. 3502, "Increase in Direct and Indirect Tax Collections", answered on 10 August 2026. The FY 2025-26 collection figure is provisional.
The question, asked by Shri Sanjay Haribhau Jadhav and Shri Omprakash Bhupalsinh alias Pavan Rajenimbalkar, sought five-year data on direct and indirect tax collections, the change in state revenues after GST, compensation paid to states, steps against tax evasion and the growth in ITR filers.
Direct tax collections over five years
| Financial year | Corporate tax | Non-corporate tax | Total (Rs crore) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021-22 | 7,12,037 | 6,96,604 | 14,12,422 |
| 2022-23 | 8,25,834 | 8,33,307 | 16,63,686 |
| 2023-24 | 9,11,055 | 10,44,726 | 19,60,166 |
| 2024-25 | 9,86,767 | 12,35,161 | 22,26,375 |
| 2025-26 (provisional) | 10,99,130 | 12,40,920 | 23,40,373 |
Totals include a small "others" component (Rs 323 crore in FY 2025-26). On these figures, net direct tax collections grew about 5.1% in FY 2025-26 over FY 2024-25 and about 66% over the five years since FY 2021-22. Growth in the last year was much slower than the 13.6% to 17.8% annual increases of the three preceding years.
What CBDT's year-end data shows
The Income Tax Department's provisional statement of direct tax collections for FY 2025-26 as on 31 March 2026 puts net collections at Rs 23,40,406 crore, 5.12% more than Rs 22,26,375 crore in FY 2024-25. Both figures are provisional and differ slightly. Gross collections were Rs 28,11,936 crore, up 4.03%, while refunds fell 1.09% to Rs 4,71,531 crore. In that statement, net corporation tax was Rs 10,99,166 crore, net non-corporate tax Rs 11,83,405 crore and securities transaction tax Rs 57,522 crore; the Lok Sabha table does not show STT separately.
Non-corporate tax, which is largely personal income tax, has been larger than corporate tax since FY 2022-23. In FY 2025-26 it made up about 53% of the total, against about 47% for corporate tax.
ITR filers
| Financial year | ITR filers |
|---|---|
| 2021-22 | 6,96,35,446 |
| 2022-23 | 7,40,10,269 |
| 2023-24 | 8,09,03,315 |
| 2024-25 | 8,56,34,289 |
| 2025-26 | 8,66,82,347 |
The filer base grew by about 1.70 crore, or roughly 24.5%, over the five years. The increase in FY 2025-26 was about 1.2%, the smallest in the period. The filer count measures participation, not tax paid, so collections should not be divided by filers to arrive at an "average" tax per return.
Indirect taxes and state revenue
Net indirect tax collections, including GST, customs and excise, rose from Rs 12,89,662 crore in FY 2021-22 to Rs 16,71,867 crore (provisional) in FY 2025-26. The reply also shows total revenue accruing to states from SGST, IGST settlement and compensation rising from Rs 8,96,215 crore in FY 2021-22 to Rs 10,36,108 crore in FY 2025-26, even as GST compensation fell from Rs 2,56,500 crore to Rs 6,978 crore over the same years.
Steps listed against tax evasion
For direct taxes, the reply cites mandatory quoting of PAN for specified transactions and PAN-Aadhaar linking, the Annual Information Statement (AIS), the NUDGE campaign (Non-Intrusive Usage of Data to Guide and Enable), the ban on receiving cash of Rs 2 lakh or more otherwise than through electronic modes, and enforcement of the Black Money (Undisclosed Foreign Income and Assets) and Imposition of Tax Act, 2015 and the Benami law as amended in 2016.
For GST, it lists the Invoice Management System introduced on the GST portal in late 2024, two special drives against fake registrations and fraudulent passing of input tax credit, e-invoicing with real-time validation, extension of biometric Aadhaar authentication for registration applications, and the rule that GSTR-1 must be filed before GSTR-3B.
What it means for practitioners
Most of these measures work through data matching: AIS, e-invoices, IMS and the GSTR-1 to GSTR-3B sequence all compare what a taxpayer reports with what third parties report. For CAs and finance teams, reconciling returns with AIS on the income-tax side and with GSTR-2B and IMS on the GST side before filing remains the most direct way to avoid mismatch notices.
Updated on 28 September 2026: added the Lok Sabha reply (Unstarred Question No. 3502, 10 August 2026) and the CBDT provisional statement for FY 2025-26 as sources, with year-wise direct tax, ITR filer, indirect tax and state revenue figures and the anti-evasion measures listed by the government; noted that the FY 2025-26 collection figure is provisional.
